The Impact of Neighbourhood on the Income and Mental Health of British Social Renters

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of neighbourhood on the income and mental health of individuals living in social housing in the United Kingdom. We exploit a dataset that is representative and longitudinal to match people to their very local neighbourhoods. Using this, we examine the effect of living in a neighbourhood in which the population is more disadvantaged on the levels and change, over a 10-year window, of income and mental health. We find that social renters who live with the most disadvantaged individuals as neighbours have lower levels of household income and poorer mental health. However, neighbourhood appears to have no impact on changes in either household income or individual mental health.

The Dialectic of Neighborhood Social Mix: Editors' Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Five studies using US data (Bayer et al, 2008;Cutler et al, 2008;Dawkins et al, 2005;Vartanian & Buck, 2005;Weinberg et al, 2004), six using Swedish data (Galster et al, , 2010Musterd et al, 2012), one using Norwegian data (Toft & Ljunggren, 2014), and one French study (Sari, 2012) find nontrivial effects on various adult labor market outcomes stemming from measures of neighborhood socioeconomic composition. By comparison, only three UK-based analyses Propper et al, 2007;van Ham & Manley, 2010) and one from the USA (Plotnick & Hoffman, 1999) find minor, if any, neighborhood effects on these outcomes. 4 In the realm of youth educational outcomes, the evidence from econometric studies that deal with geographic selection is even more consensual in the negative consequences of concentrated disadvantage (cf.…”

Does neighbourhood influence ethnic inequalities in economic activity? Findings from the ONS Longitudinal Study

“…Elliott, 1999;Oreopoulos, 2003;Kling et al, 2007) and Western Europe (e.g. Buck, 2001;Musterd et al, 2003;Musterd and Andersson, 2006;Bolster et al, 2007;Propper et al, 2007;van Ham and Manley, 2010). The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of geographical factors on labour market transition.…”

Neighbourhoods matter : examinging neighbourhood significance through the eyes of women who live in supportive housing

“…Understandings of home are directly linked to complex socio-spatial experiences that occur in their neighbourhood and are tied to their sense of belonging to the community. These experiences in the home and neighbourhood seem to be especially important in influencing participants' health and quality of life because these are places where the women spend the majority of their everyday lives, a finding that aligns with existing literature on the significance of neighbourhood-level experiences for low-income individuals (Ellen et al 2001;Propper et al 2007;Dawkins 2007).…”

“…While this interaction may not seem significant to someone with access to extensive social support networks of family and friends, these interactions were deemed very important for participants because many of these women did not have access to an extended network of supportive people in their lives. Since the participants' social networks were more geographically limited due to factors such as their inability to afford a car and their lack of involvement in paid employment, neighbourhood-based social networks were especially significant to health and feelings of belonging at the neighbourhood level (Ellen et al 2001;Propper et al 2007;Dawkins 2007). The few participants who expressed that they did not feel part of the community explained that they did not feel this way because they did not interact enough with their neighbours.…”

“…Evidence suggests that neighbourhood-based social networks may have a significant impact on health outcomes and quality of life for people with low incomes, as the social networks of lower-income households tend to be more geographically limited and more tied to neighbourhood than those of middle and higher income households (Ellen et al 2001). Local networks are particularly significant for people with lower incomes who may be limited in their ability to choose where to live, to afford material items such as a house or a car and to effectively access social and recreational services (Propper et al 2007;Dawkins 2007). Although research suggests that one's living environment can strongly influence health (Sooman and Macintyre, 1995;Caughy, O'Campo & Muntaner 2003), little is known about neighbourhood-level influences on health for women who have experienced homelessness.…”